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Fricassee of Lobster

A lobster fricassee made with cream, white sauce, cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shell.

  2. Add the lobster meat to the thin white sauce.

  3. Stir in the cream, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer for ten minutes.

  2. Add lemon juice and serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flesh and sweet, delicate seafood flavor of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Thin white sauce
Forms the creamy base that holds the lobster meat together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy flavors.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, and lobster meat turns tough and rubbery when overcooked. Keeping the heat gentle protects both the sauce texture and the lobster.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, cream, sauce, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, sauce, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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